Tuesday, December 23, 2014

What's your grade for 2014? -- Dec. 23, 2014 column

By MARSHA MERCER

To hear President Barack Obama, 2014 has been a
heckuva year.

“Pick any metric you want: America’s resurgence is
real,” the president declared at his year-end news conference.

In case you missed it: Over the last 57 months,
businesses have created nearly 11 million new jobs, most of them full-time. Wages
are rising. America is the world’s largest producer of natural gas. Gas is 70
cents a gallon lower than last Christmas. Ten million Americans have gained health
insurance this year, the president said.

“Meanwhile, around the world, America is leading,”
he said. We lead the coalition to destroy ISIL, the international fight to
check Russian aggression in the Ukraine, the global fight against Ebola in West
Africa and efforts to combat climate change. Our combat mission in Afghanistan
is nearly over, he said, thanking the troops and their families.

“There is no doubt that we can enter into the New
Year with renewed confidence that America is making significant strides where
it counts,” Obama said.

Sounds good, but when I asked a few people to grade 2014,
they looked pained.

One said “fast,” as in the year flew by. Others reluctantly
gave the year a C or just shrugged. I agree that 2014 deserves a C – not the
worst of years, certainly not the best – but we may be easy graders.

Several polls this month have found between 64 and
69 percent of Americans still think the country is heading in the wrong
direction. Seven in 10 people say the next president should govern differently
than Obama, putting Obama in George W. Bush territory near the end of Bush’s
second term, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Presidential historian Robert Dallek likens what has
happened to Obama to what befell President Lyndon B.
Johnson in the mid-1960s.

LBJ won the 1964 presidential election
by one of the largest landslides in history and pushed landmark, controversial
measures through Congress, including Medicare and Medicaid, civil rights and
voting rights laws. Obama won decisively in 2008 and pushed through the
Affordable Care Act.

“This is not to suggest that history is
repeating itself. There are too many differences between Johnson and Obama —
both the men and their presidencies — to argue that,” Dallek wrote in an online
essay for Reuters in October. “Yet, as Mark Twain said, history may not repeat
itself, but it does rhyme.”

After both presidents achieved
progressive change, they lost public support. The war in Vietnam ruined LBJ’s
credibility and stopped his domestic agenda. Obama has been blocked by a
combination of foreign and domestic developments. His popularity has tanked.

But historians may view Obama
differently than people do today, says Dallek, one of the historians who have
had several dinners with the president.

“It is doubtful that Obama will end up with as poor
a reputation as Johnson,” the historian writes. A recent ranking of public
approval of the last 10 presidents placed Johnson third from the bottom, above
only Richard M. Nixon and George W. Bush.

“Historians will likely
credit the Obama administration with more advances toward a more humane
society,” says Dallek, citing the Affordable Care Act, equal rights for women,
equal treatment for gays and lesbians and sympathetic treatment for “Dreamers,”
children brought illegally to the United States by their parents.

As Obama thinks about
his place in history, he is signaling that he hasn’t given up on the present. His
December surprise announcement to start normalizing relations with Cuba shows he
wants to remain relevant.

He acknowledges
there is plenty of work left to do and says he’s energized and excited about what
he calls his presidency’s fourth quarter. He also claims
he wants to work with Republicans.

But as the GOP takes control of Congress with what
they believe is a mandate to roll back Obama’s policies, the president is
staking out a confrontational game plan.

“I intend to continue to do what I’ve been doing,”
Obama said of his use of executive actions, which many in the GOP consider unconstitutional.

Partisan battles, standoffs, vetoes and more
disappointment surely lie ahead. By this time next year, 2015 may be lucky to
get a C.